Historical claims require evidence
by MikeGeneIn reviewing Behe's new book, both Richard Dawkins and Nick Matzke lead off with the same talking point:
But things went wrong, especially at the famous 2005 trial where Judge John E. Jones III immortally summed up as "breathtaking inanity" the effort to introduce intelligent design into the school curriculum in Dover, Pa. After his humiliation in court, Behe "” the star witness for the creationist side "” might have wished to re-establish his scientific credentials and start over. Unfortunately, he had dug himself in too deep. He had to soldier on. "The Edge of Evolution" is the messy result, and it doesn't make for attractive reading.
Michael Behe is the leading advocate of "intelligent design" (ID), which has been on the ropes since the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. There, Behe's effort to show that ID is science and not creationism failed [1-3]. The Edge of Evolution is Behe's rather scattered comeback attempt.
While Matzke is not quite as catty as Dawkins, both are telling us that Behe wrote his new book as consequence of the Dover trial. According to Dawkins, the EoE is the "messy result" of Behe having to "soldier on" after the defeat in Dover. According to Matzke, it is a "comeback attempt."
Yet we are left with one glaring question "“ do either of these critics have any EVIDENCE to support their historical claims? Since I'm sure these scholars would not invent histories about other people, I'll be eagerly awaiting this evidence in the comments section.
November 4th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
I guess you don't have anything to say in defense of Behe's science if you're going to complain about stuff like this.
Heck, I'll take the bait. Darwin's Black Box put Behe on the map. He became the leading authority for ID. He was a major inspiration for the Dover school board. He was the lead, primary, star witness for the Defense. He testified for 3 straight days, more than any other witness on either side for the whole six week trial. He thought he had kicked butt and convinced the judge that ID was serious (he was grinning from ear to ear after his testimony, and shook all of our hands). He maintained this position literally until the decision came down, at which point he took one press call informing him of the decision and took no others. Everyone considered the Dover trial a major defeat for him.
Then, 1.5 years later, Behe comes out with another book that is just as ambitious as Darwin's Black Box, but not nearly as "good" even on it's own terms. Have you read the book, Mike? The book is an attempt to push ID even further into biology than before. But: At least DBB was coherent and somewhat challenging. Edge of Evolution is wildly incompetent on multiple levels. The book has about half-a-paper's worth of argumentation (argumentation which would be nuked by any serious peer-reviewer since it is based on fundamental misunderstandings of the literature, statistics, etc.), stretched out into book form. It is rushed and half-baked.
Instead of your usual hair-splitting, why don't you do something useful and produce your own review of Behe's book? I suspect you've got the background and cajones to point out errors where they occur, and unlike me, other ID people would actually listen to what you have to say.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 4, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Hi Nick,
You could have made the same point with one sentence: No, I don't have any evidence; it was just my impression. I don't think inventing history is an example of "hair-splitting."
Comment by MikeGene — November 4, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Hey, all I said is that EoE was a "comeback attempt." All this requires is (1) success, followed by (2) a significant failure, followed by (3) an attempt to return to (1). The evidence is just fine for all those.
Your discussion is a great way of distracting everyone from the empirical flaws in Behe's book, though…
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 4, 2007 @ 2:24 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Nick asked Mike:
That's a great idea. How about it, Mike?
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Nick:
That doesn't explain why you felt the need to misrepresent him ( here ) just as you did before with the 9+2 nonsense. I guess it's ok to claim something without evidence , to believe something and evangelize it on faith, if it helps your cause.
Comment by Guts — November 4, 2007 @ 4:48 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Just wondering who's this Nick Matzke in the scientific world?
Comment by neddy — November 4, 2007 @ 4:52 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Guts — as far as I can tell you didn't manage to assert an interpretable claim in the previous thread. You just said something vague about frontloading and then ducked when I asked you if you really thought the function of snake venom proteins was frontloaded.
As for misrepresenting Behe, if you actually read my review you know that I addressed (1) Behe's claim that two binding sites can't evolve, (2) his claim that the evolution of a single binding site is very improbable, and (3) his dodge that the evolution of toxin binding sites is "special" and therefore dozen't contradict (2).
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 4, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Neddy asked:
Neddy,
Here's his bio (follow the link for more details):
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Nick:
Of course I did.
No, you didn't address (3) and you misinterpreted (2), in the thread you erroneously claimed that snake toxin evolution is impossible according to Behe, despite the fact that he doesn't regard that kind of evolution as relevant, and that snake toxin evolution doesn't even always result in the addition of a binding site.
And here you are dodging the request for evidence for your historical claim.
Comment by Guts — November 4, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Sure I did:
You continue:
Yeah, Behe cravenly tries to protect his claim that protein-protein binding sites are wildly improbable (he says that it takes on the order of 10^20 organisms to produce one) by cavalierly dismissing in vitro experiments, antibody evolution, microbial toxin evolution, and numerous other cases where the evolution of novel protein-protein binding sites by a mutation-selection mechanism is well known. One of several groups of problems with this is that snake venom proteins (a) aren't a bacterium-produced toxin, which is what Behe was talking about, (b) instead have evolved a dozen or more times in snakes & their relatives, which are vertebrates, which therefore have low population sizes (and it doesn't matter that some of the venom proteins orginated back in the legged ancestors of snakes, they still have population sizes way below 10^20), and (c) snake venom proteins don't just break things, instead they are exquisitely specific (so much so that they have many biomedical purposes) and look as "designed" as any of Behe's allegedly IDed binding sites.
Doesn't matter. In many cases it has. Often the ancestral venom protein had some biochemical activity very similar to the ancestral protein. But now we have huge families of snake venom proteins are all specialized onto different targets. Like subtypes of mammalian muscarinic acetylcholine receptors. Which I believe I mentioned in my review.
You can't just go around claiming that the evolution of protein-protein binding sites is wildly improbable, and then brazenly dismiss all of the evidence showing it's not, and then claim you've got a serious argument. It's silly. But that's what Behe does.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 4, 2007 @ 6:58 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
This is a matter of serious frustration, on all sorts of levels. Firstly, the whole charade that a judge has the competence to come to a conclusion as to what constitutes science, and the corresponding approval of the darwinists – "A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel! O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!" Come on, guys, I seriously doubt you would have adopted this attitude to judicial input had the judgment gone the other way.
Next, the fact that the public opponents of Behe should be invited to write reviews of his book. Next, the fact that in most of those reviews, little attempt is actually made to deal with the thrust of the book – in some cases, the reviews showed little evidence of even having read the book! So people make decisions about whether or not to read the book based on a review which completely fails to engage with it.
Finally for here, the fact that, since I have a real interest in these matters, I actually want to see this debate had. WHY can't the two sides get over their political posturing and tell me about the real science? I mean, it's kind of important, really – if (as Behe says) a triple or quadruple change to the binding sites lies beyond the edge of evolution, then can't we use that to work on a drug to treat it?
Comment by Exile From Groggs — November 4, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
If IDers really believed this, they shouldn't have designed the book Pandas and People to be used in public schools and designed it to receive a favorable constitutional ruling from a judge, and they shouldn't have written law review articles professing to be a "legal guidebook" and claiming that judges had the very right you claim they don't.
And if you're going to be consistent, you should keep judges from ruling on environmental cases, forensics cases, accident liability, and all of the other multitude of cases where decisions about what science is credible and what is "junk science" are a key part of the case.
Read my review.
Hey, that's what I do in my review. It's the TT posts (and Behe's first reply) that have been failing to engage on the science. Basically, they haven't got anything, because Behe's argument was so incredibly poor to anyone who bothers to look up the relevant science.
The problem is that Behe assumes rather than proves that no step-by-step pathway exists. It's the same problem he had with the original IC argument. On the other hand, we have many examples that prove that protein-protein binding sites are within the reach of mutation-selection mechanisms, with reasonable (much less than 10^20) population sizes.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 4, 2007 @ 7:11 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
PS: And Judge Jones didn't decide the science all by himself. He received expert testimony from both sides. He noted that the science organizations, the scientific literature, the vast majority of scientists, the arguments, and the evidence all favored the evolution side. ID, on the other hand, was primarily a collection of excuses.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 4, 2007 @ 7:15 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Hi Nick,
That's not all you said. You said essentially the same thing Dawkins said "“ Behe wrote his second book as some form of reaction to the Dover trial. Since you tried to rationalize this claim in your first reply, it's too late to rewrite what you meant.
No. You are the one who makes historical claims about other people in the scientific literature, but as we can see, has nothing more that his squishy subjective impressions to support those claims. Your attempt to change the topic is a great way of distracting everyone from your lack of empirical evidence, though.
Comment by MikeGene — November 4, 2007 @ 7:17 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Nick:
Except Behe himself states that that is not a probability argument, he was just repeating the statistics in the literature for a particular example. Behe no where claims that a single binding site is impossible to evolve as you erroneously claimed. His claim is that three or more different cellular proteins binding specifically to each other is beyond darwinian evolution.
Nick:
It's an example of foreign protein binding. You can't just put words in Behe's mouth.
Nick:
But they didn't evolve independantly in snakes and their relatives.
Nick:
Well of course, they evolved from normal orthologs with some small variation which makes the protein toxic and/or it could be just that it is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Both of these molecules may have evolved from a common ancester in which the snake version would have been optimized for toxicity, sometimes without even touching the binding site.
And I note that you still haven't provided evidence for your historical claim, the book was in production even a year before the Dover decision — which makes this claim "The Edge of Evolution is Behe's rather scattered comeback attempt." simply false.
Comment by Guts — November 4, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Many IDers thought the actions of a small group in PA were ill advised and few in number are those who pushed for public school initiatives.
Comment by Bradford — November 4, 2007 @ 8:09 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
What are the historical claims for which is evidence being sought? I don't even understand this blog entry.
There is the opinion (not an historical claim) that Behe wrote EoE as a consequence of the Dover defeat. Some might even view that as a tautology: the defeat was so notorious and so crushing that Behe would be insane to hope that readers would ignore it. A book following the trial could naturally be viewed as a response to it, and to hold such an opinion is not inappropriate given the circumstances.
One expects reviews in general to be opinionated, so this is nothing new. A few authors have good reason to believe that Behe was embarrassed at the trial and is now trying to save face. So what? What are the historical claims?
Seriously, this seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for a story.
Comment by Frostman — November 4, 2007 @ 9:46 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Welcome to the Martyrdom Machine at Telic Thoughts. Any barrel-bottom is worth scraping if it will yield an "injury" that can be blamed on "Darwinists".
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Hi Frostman,
You ask:
You answered your own question:
Instead of evidence, you merely try to prop up an "opinion" (that was never qualified as an opinion) as "natural."
I never claimed this was a "story." The story about Behe, as told in the NYT and TREE, comes from Dawkins and Matzke. I first wondered about this when I read Dawkins review, but said nothing. But when Matzke repeated the same story, it starts to look like another one of those memes critics like to spread.
Comment by MikeGene — November 4, 2007 @ 10:20 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Unable to come up with evidence, Keiths now resorts to personal attacks rooted in misrepresentation. No where do I claim anything about "injury" or "Darwinists."
Comment by MikeGene — November 4, 2007 @ 10:33 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Another as in: the defeat of ID er…creationism and the humiliation of Behe at the hands of Judge Jones destroyed the movement to introduce a Trojan Horse into our public schools to further that vacuous magic IDiots pass off as intelligent design. Did I leave out some good one liners?
Comment by Bradford — November 4, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Believe me, the Martyrdom Machine encompasses far, far, more than just this single thread.
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 10:58 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Fact or opinion? Until we have technology which would allow us to read Behe's mind, it is by definition opinion. The same paragraph mentions Behe was embarrassed. Fact or opinion? Behe has been on the ropes. Fact or opinion? Why did you not ask for "evidence" of those "historical claims" too?
That we are even discussing this is evidence of something, though.
Comment by Frostman — November 4, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Keiths:
I don't know Keiths. I'm still trying to figure out what front loading or critiques of abiogenesis or IC have to do with creationism. Do you register Bible when those topics are discussed and can you account for the intellectual dishonesty of critics that want to impute motives while concealing their own?
Comment by Bradford — November 4, 2007 @ 11:55 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
The real reason Behe, Dawkins and others write books? Sure they have views they want expressed but try money as an option when looking for motives.
Comment by Bradford — November 4, 2007 @ 11:58 pm
November 5th, 2007 at 12:01 am
Hi Bradford,
As odd as it may seem, I can respect that opinion. After all, both sides posture (how many times have ID proponents crowed about the demise of Darwinism in x more years, for example?). What I'm talking about are these efforts to invent history; stories about people. I don't know when and why Behe wrote his book, but I'm not the telling stories about Behe.
Comment by MikeGene — November 5, 2007 @ 12:01 am
November 5th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Hi Keiths,
Frostman was talking about this thread and you replied to his claim about this thread. You have clearly shown a willingness to misrepresent others. Perhaps your willingness to misrepresent others should be a topic of discussion in some of those ethics threads you preach in?
Comment by MikeGene — November 5, 2007 @ 12:02 am
November 5th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Hi Frostman,
Being on the ropes is a judgment call about a position, not a claim about what someone else did or thought. As for Behe being "embarrassed," I don't see that one. But yes, that would indeed be a truth claim about Behe. So yes, that claim would require evidence.
Frostman, are you telling me that if someone wants to use the NYT or TREE to tell stories about another person, evidence is not needed to support those stories?
Comment by MikeGene — November 5, 2007 @ 12:05 am
November 5th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Mike:
I can respect an opposing view but have difficulty according respect to verbal nuances that are injected into an opinion to denigrate an opposing view with cleverisms. For example, it's OK to not believe an argument for x. What critics so often do is take x to its logical absurdity and then pretend that this is the position of IDists. So an argument that life arose through a process revealing purposeful and intelligent causal components becomes Goddidit to the listener who in turn accuses the proponent of the argument with advocating magic. Why magic? Because the critic does not believe in God and thinks all avenues that do not bar divine possibilities need to be rejected. What better way to accomplish this than attaching one's own subjective assessment to an opponent. Evidence for genetic codes and arguments based on that can be reduced to magical propositions while evidence that amino acids become synthesized in extracellular environments is presented as evidence for cells arising. There is the slick hand of manipulation in this.
Comment by Bradford — November 5, 2007 @ 12:16 am
November 5th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Oh please. Behe has been working on binding site stuff for a couple of years. So it's not like he went and invented a whole new line of argument after the Kitzmiller defeat. I never claimed he did. But it is true that this book was his big chance to attempt to reverse the slide of 2004-2006. And it is also true that even by the standards of previous ID work this book needed some more research and thought, and is rushed and half-baked.
But since we're doing history, let's reexamine how Behe's new book was announced to the world:
From the promotional material for the book. I'll be happy to accept your apologies any time…
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 5, 2007 @ 12:23 am
November 5th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Hi Bradford,
Sure, but that's just the way they see the world (unless they are being unscrupulously dishonest). And since there are plenty of people out there using ID for apologetic or political reasons, the perception "has legs." I can't dictate how the critics should see the world. However, if they do come to me with such stereotypes in hand, they will quickly find out they have handicapped themselves with their own stereotypes. If some critics want to lead with their chins, well, why should I stop them?
But when it comes to making claims about people (what they think and what they do), that's different. For now you have people essentially spreading gossip about others. Such story-tellers are obligated to provide evidence or make it crystal clear they are just passing gas.
Comment by MikeGene — November 5, 2007 @ 12:34 am
November 5th, 2007 at 12:52 am
And he claims this, because the probability of a double binding site would be 1 in 10^40 or worse, which he gets by multiplying 1 in 10^20 by 1 in 10^20, which he asserts is a good rough estimate of the probability of evolving a protein-protein binding site, which he gets from an incredibly fuzzy argument that equates a protein-protein binding site with the chloroquine resistance trait, which he asserts is a double mutant that only arises once in every 10^20 organisms. All of these steps in the argument are wrong, and I listed and addressed them all in my review. You can't pretend I don't know about all these and play one off against the other.
Yes or no, Guts: can natural evolutionary processes produce highly specific protein-protein binding sites with reasonable probability? I wasn't the one who made him equate protein-protein binding sites to a chloroquine-resistance mutation with odds of only appearing (allegedly) in 1 in 10^20 organisms, and I didn't make him claim that evolution could only produce beneficial changes that ended up breaking the organism's "original" functions.
You apparently think that all snake venom proteins trace all the way back to reptile ancestors. *Venom* traces back that far. But there are hundreds or thousands of different venom proteins, in dozens of different protein families, and many of these have very specific activities on specific prey proteins, and are recently derived, even within modern genera and species.
And sometimes the binding site is touched, and the binding target changes, and optimization occurs for a new target, and voila, Behe is refuted.
Behe's book is scattered, and Behe is trying to come back from previous defeats. He's trying to trump the various counterarguments raised against his original IC arguments — primarily cooption — by moving to the level of protein-protein binding sites. His idea is that even if e.g. the flagellum proteins are found in functioning subsystems, there is no way to link the subsystems because protein-protein binding sites can't evolve with reasonable probability. This yet another way this book is a comeback attempt, in addition to the recent history and his own press materials.
You can disagree with my opinion of course, but it's an opinion and it's exactly the kind of opinion you are supposed to give in book reviews.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 5, 2007 @ 12:52 am
November 5th, 2007 at 12:55 am
Hi Nick,
In other words, he could have been working on this book long before Dover.
Huh? Apologize for asking for evidence??? You're the story-teller Nick, thus the burden of proof is on you. Me thinks I struck a raw nerve. Your first response outlined your thinking and it was all rooted in impression (it also included an attempt to side-track the thread with other questions/assertions). Your second response was to water down your claim and make it sound more vague than it was. Your third response? You've dredged up the publisher's promotion where, by golly, they are actually trying to play up the celebrity status of the author! I'm not sure how this is supposed to be evidence of your claim, but clearly you are scrambling for something, after the fact.
Remember Nick, I'm not taking a position either way. I was just asking for the evidence that led you and Dawkins to tell this story. And I think we've already seen what you had.
Comment by MikeGene — November 5, 2007 @ 12:55 am
November 5th, 2007 at 12:56 am
PS: The "irreducible complexity squared" stuff is more evidence of a comeback attempt. Basically the argument is, "if you thought the cilium and flagellum were complicated back in 1996, they're even more complicated now!" Unfortunately he didn't do the minimal research necessary to check if that extra complexity was actually required in all systems.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 5, 2007 @ 12:56 am
November 5th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Mike — you asked for evidence, I have provided even more of it beyond the obvious point about recent history which was sufficient to establish it in the first place. You claimed that Dawkins and I were starting some devious meme, but then it turns out it's in the very promotional material put out by Behe's publisher (and what's the point of our little conspiracy supposed to be, anyway? "Behe attempts a comeback" is not exactly an earthshaking proposition. It's not even negative really. ID fans think it is a trump card beating previous objections like cooption — in other words, a successful comeback. I disagree that it's successful. What's the huge freakin' deal?).
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 5, 2007 @ 1:02 am
November 5th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Nick, I spoke to Behe in early 2004 in an e-mail conversation , where I asked him if he was writing a new book , he said to expect it in a few years. So either you're claiming Behe is psychic or you're wrong, take your pick.
Comment by Guts — November 5, 2007 @ 1:04 am
November 5th, 2007 at 1:05 am
For years, critics have been demanding that Behe respond to the criticisms of his original IC arguments. When he does it, in book form, it's all just a "comeback attempt" as a consequence of the Dover trial. LOL. Maybe Behe was, y'know, simply responding to the criticisms. That's kind of how arguments go.
Comment by MikeGene — November 5, 2007 @ 1:05 am
November 5th, 2007 at 1:23 am
Nick:
Nick, on page 143 he shows evolution of 1 new binding site with a population of 10^8. Besides, your example can just be due to the way the extracelluar parts of the receptors are different in specific sub-types.
Nick:
No Nick, not just "venom" in general, but also venom components:
Nick:
lol
Comment by Guts — November 5, 2007 @ 1:23 am
November 5th, 2007 at 1:26 am
Hi Nick,
Huh? The book publisher promote$ the book by playing up Behe's celebrity status and you and Dawkins think this is evidence that Behe wrote the book as a reaction to the Dover trial?? You get your evidence from commercials?
Now you are misrepresenting me again. What I wrote was this: "The story about Behe, as told in the NYT and TREE, comes from Dawkins and Matzke. I first wondered about this when I read Dawkins review, but said nothing. But when Matzke repeated the same story, it starts to look like another one of those memes critics like to spread."
Er, it's a commercial. And where does it say that Behe wrote the book as a consequence of his performance in the Dover trial?
I said nothing about any conspiracy. Neither did I say it was a huge freakin' deal. You make a truth claim about Behe and I ask for evidence. Readers of TT can now simply marvel at the way you, Keiths, and Frostman reacted to a request for evidence.
Comment by MikeGene — November 5, 2007 @ 1:26 am
November 5th, 2007 at 6:36 am
Nick: First, unlike most opponents of ID, you are at least prepared to try and defend your position, for which kudos IMO. Most such opponents present incoherent arguments which are lapped up by approving media and don't take any notice of dissenting voices. If only Dawkins took comments about "The God Delusion" (for example) as seriously as you took comments about your review.
If IDers really believed this, they shouldn't have designed the book Pandas and People to be used in public schools and designed it to receive a favorable constitutional ruling from a judge, and they shouldn't have written law review articles professing to be a "legal guidebook" and claiming that judges had the very right you claim they don't.
I'm not saying that the IDist approach to the constitution is better than that of their opponents. However, it is their opponents that want to use a political process to close down the debate – primarily on specious grounds. "Oh, we can't mention God because of 'separation of church and state' – so even if we find Psalm 119 coded in DNA, we couldn't tell anybody about it. Or not in science classes, anyway." That's just rubbish. That wasn't what was envisaged when the amendment to the constitution was put forward – it was designed to secure religious freedom and tolerance, not prevent intellectual debate. What do lawyers have to do with scientific enquiry?
And if you're going to be consistent, you should keep judges from ruling on environmental cases, forensics cases, accident liability, and all of the other multitude of cases where decisions about what science is credible and what is "junk science" are a key part of the case.
This ties in with what you wrote about the judge having advice. If the judge is coming to a conclusion based on the evidence, he can go as far as the evidence allows him to go. So for example he could (IMO incorrectly) conclude that Behe had failed to interact with the papers on the evolution of the blood clotting system, and therefore Behe's assertion that the blood clotting system is irreducibly complex is not proved.
However, since the judge didn't bother to analyse the papers himself, and Behe wasn't even apparently given the opportunity to see whether he had in fact read them, his apparent chain of logic in then inferring that this falsifies Behe's claims is flawed. It is simply logically wrong. And as for going beyond that to say that ID is not science – give me a break. Judge Jones went at least two steps too far.
Comment by Exile From Groggs — November 5, 2007 @ 6:36 am
November 7th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Mike (to Nick):
We are going around in circles, Mike. These are opinions, and the evidence upon which these opinions are based is the Dover trial.
It is not difficult for someone knowledgeable about the trial to conclude that the ruling was profoundly embarrassing for ID in general and Behe in particular. For example the judge concluded in a matter-of-fact way that two of the pro-ID school board members lied at their depositions. Behe contributed to Of Pandas and People, a book which turned out to be a devastating piece of evidence for the pro-ID side (see "cdesign proponentsists").
If you want to argue that the trial wasn't embarrassing and/or that Behe did not lose credibility and has no need to make a "comeback", then that is your opinion. And that is fine. But many see it differently.
Comment by Frostman — November 7, 2007 @ 10:00 am
November 7th, 2007 at 10:23 am
BTW TT forgot my account, so I just re-registered. Hopefully no one will get their name stolen
Comment by Frostman — November 7, 2007 @ 10:23 am
November 7th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
You are, quite revealingly, mixing two issues — science and the constitution. All the constitution is applicable to is governmental action in public schools. That doesn't shut down any allegedly scientific debate at all. Unless you think ninth-grade biology classrooms are the right place to debate and resolve scientific questions.
ID/creationism's problem within the scientific community isn't constitutional. The problem is that (1) supernatural hypotheses are untestable and (2) the ID movement's objections to the mainstream view are simply incompetent and wrong.
So what the ID movement does — because it keeps losing the scientific debate in the scientific community, and because its real goal is religious apologetics anyway — is try and jam its junk science into the public schools, and try to make this seem legitimate by pretending that there is a real scientific debate going on.
You are thinking of the immune system. With blood clotting, the major point was that a great many of Behe's "required" proteins were not in fact required. Which shows he can't even define his own allegedly "IC" system correctly.
They were introduced into evidence as an exhibit, just like everything else, and the court had 2 months between the end of trial and the decision to review all the exhibits. Plus he had expert testimony on the immune system evolution topic.
Sure he was. Behe explicitly said he had not read most of them, despite having said both in 1996 and in the 2005 trial that "the scientific community has no answers on the evolution of the immune system." It's pretty simple. Behe tried to cover, but you've got to realize: Behe's continual waffling and backsliding and papering-over problems to obscure what were basically very simple points was *exactly* what sunk
his credibility in the trial.
Behe claimed there were no answers in the scientific literature on the origin of the immune system. The plaintiffs showed there were such answers, and introduced said literature into evidence. Game over. And then we wrote it up in Nature Immunology. Deal with that and the bibliography if you want the IC argument and Behe's claims to have any shred of credibility. Until then, you're sunk.
The judge received testimony from both sides on all aspects of the "is ID science?" issue. As it turned out, all the evidence pointed one way: no. All the ID people had was excuses. The whole trial was like watching a house of cards collapse in slow motion. Maybe you had to be there — but wait, fortunately Nova is broadcasting a reenactment on PBS next Tuesday. Cheers!
PS: And Behe's book is sunk unless someone can come up with a defense against my criticisms. Follow the evidence where it leads, people, remember?
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 7, 2007 @ 4:43 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Nick Matzke:
Nick's first objection is grounded in political spin. A month or two ago Mike, Doug and others suggested hypotheses related to a blog entry. None entailed testing supernaturalism. One can see through the supernatural card for what it is- a weak talking point.
The second objection merits no response in the absence of a specific complaint.
Those attempting to alter school curriculums were small in number even prior to Jones' edict. Mike has made the point about historic claims needing supporting evidence. The comments by anti-IDists reinforce the perception that what we are seeing are opinions of history, not documentaries.
Comment by Bradford — November 7, 2007 @ 4:58 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Unbelievable. Here we are again. Nick, last time around you dropped it, but here it is one more time.
What proteins are you refering to? The ones that Behe explicitly said in DBB to comprise the IC protion of the blood clotting cascade: proaccelerin, prothrombin, Stuart factor, fibrinogen.
Behe:
and
What's with the pizzed tone directed towards Behe? Sometimes you come across like a bitter ex.
Comment by Doug — November 7, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
There has got to be two Nick M's. The more reasonable one, and this one – the trained parrot.
Comment by Doug — November 7, 2007 @ 6:05 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
As far as a defense against your criticisms, NM, Behe has responded on his blog on amazon.com.
PBS doesn't stretch to the UK. And I maintain that it is not the role of a judge to pass an opinion on whether or not ID is science. He is entitled to pass an opinion as to whether it can be constitutionally taught in schools – although as I've said, this is abuse of the law by any civilised standard, since the constitutional amendment was designed to protect religious freedom, not prevent grade 9 students being exposed to "dangerous ideas". But that doesn't allow him to come to a conclusion as to whether ID is science. Del Ratzsch ("Nature, Design and Science") analyses this question in a lot more rigorous and less political terms.
However, I will confess that I am out of my depth in matters of historical fact about the trial, and will therefore leave the discussion to the big boys and girls.
Comment by Exile From Groggs — November 7, 2007 @ 6:06 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Exile from Groggs:
EfG has identified the crux of the problem. Dover PA was an example of creeping incrementalism designed to promote a political agenda under the guise of law. The Amendment to which he alludes was designed to keep the government from favoring one religion at the expense of others. In a textbook example of historic legal revisionism 20th century jurists based a legal turn of direction on a phrase borrowed from a private letter sent by Thomas Jefferson using the phrase 'separation clause.' What began as an attempt to separate the doctrine of a particular religion from becoming integrated into government policy, evolved to prohibit mention of a deity or even non-religious concepts that are alleged by a party to a lawsuit as allowing the possibility of a divine thought to enter a student's thought process. Non-religious concepts in this case include such things as irreducible complexity and CSI. Had front loading been as prominently discussed it would have included that too. Follow the logic. No favoring a specific religion to no mention of a deity in a public school to no mention of a concept that might be interpreted as an apologetic to a religious concept by someone. That's what allows a judge to make a logical jump from determining the plausibility of IC and other concepts, as a measure of the viability of ID, to the related conclusion being relevant to separating specific religious doctrine from government policy. Our friend from the UK may not be deeply versed in some American cultural and legal nuances but he has identified what ails our legal system.
Comment by Bradford — November 7, 2007 @ 8:10 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Bradford:
This is rubbish. As a European, I have no business with your political squabbles, but I'm wondering why can't you accept that science classes in public schools teach science according to the views of the experts, namely the scientists? IC, CSI and FL are not scientific concepts, at least not according to mainstream science. It's obvious to me that the folks who try to put ID into the curriculum have only one goal: save more souls for Jesus. Say it ain't so.
Comment by Raevmo — November 7, 2007 @ 8:23 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Sigh. Went through all of this at the trial too. Behe also wrote — in Pandas, no less:
So, contrary to Behe apologists, you can't say that Behe "really meant" that the "blood-clotting system" is only the four core components. Because right there in Pandas he says the four components aren't good enough, and constitute an incomplete, nonworking system that leads to death. Game over.
What's unbelievable is that you think the same old half-thought out Behe defense counterarguments will work, when they were already debunked in public, at trial, 2 years ago.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 7, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Behe couldn't even bring himself to address most of my points in his amazon reply. Why should anyone serious take him seriously, if he can't? Follow the evidence where it leads, guys.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 7, 2007 @ 8:30 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Nick Matzke:
Whether he stated four or five or seven is irrelevant in one respect. An IC system is defined as multi-component. Four qualifies.
Comment by Bradford — November 7, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Raevmo:
Raevmo, I find your faith in unknown pathways to life to be as indicative of a non-scientific agenda on your part as you find IC to be religious. The separation clause is the original wedge designed to exclude certain thoughts from academia.
Comment by Bradford — November 7, 2007 @ 8:37 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Bradford — Behe was wrong about the definition of "the IC blood-clotting system" somewhere. You pick where. When confronted with this obvious contradiction between DBB and Pandas at trial, Behe wouldn't admit an error in either place, and came up on the spot with yet a third definition of "the IC blood-clotting system". Conclusion: Behe will redefine his terms and systems at will to avoid admitting error. And his credibility took another hit. This sort of thing went on for a day and a half, and at the end the only one in the courtroom who thought it went well was Behe himself.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 7, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Bradford:
You are such a boring predictable creobot. I didn't say anything about pathways to life, nor did I say that IC is religious. You're the one with an agenda: save souls for Jesus. Say it ain't so.
You gotta be kidding. Academia's thoughts dictated by an ancient clause. When was the last time you visited academia?
Comment by Raevmo — November 7, 2007 @ 8:47 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Heh. Reducible "irreducible complexity". Game over.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 7, 2007 @ 8:48 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Raevmo:
What's the matter? Didn't get your share of red meat today? Withdrawal pains from two days without TT? I'm not here to save souls- yours or anyone else's. That's between you and the God in whose existence you do not believe. It is important though to acknowledge biological realities. You don't have a scientific case for life by asserting that mainstream science believes in OOL.
The "ancient clause" I referred to is a part of American history. How old do you think the USA is? I visited academia today. When is the last time you visited the USA?
Comment by Bradford — November 7, 2007 @ 9:06 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Whether he stated four or five or seven is irrelevant in one respect. An IC system is defined as multi-component. Four qualifies.
Not quite Nick. When you can reduce a minimal genome to a self- replicator and replay the greatest putative event in history you are entitled to make the reducible boasts.
Comment by Bradford — November 7, 2007 @ 9:11 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Bradford:
I'm OK, thanks for your concern. I'll continue the discussion with God.
Um, where did I make that assertion?
I'm getting really bored again discussing with you. You never answer a question. I visited the USA 5 months ago. So what?
Comment by Raevmo — November 7, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Maybe he just thinks your a boring windbag who isn't worth the time to bother with ?
Comment by thesciphishow — November 7, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
November 8th, 2007 at 12:08 am
I don't think that's totally fair. Behe answered a lot of Nick's criticisms, and did so rather calm and coolly. I think the two of them could both make a list of which claims they believe each other didn't address, really.
I usually mention how I'm not exactly sold on the idea of IC structures and such. At the same time, I rather like how Behe is calm and relaxed in his responses, and has devoted quite a lot of time on his blog to responding to reviews. I honestly thought he was done with this weeks ago, but the topic continues.
Comment by nullasalus — November 8, 2007 @ 12:08 am
November 8th, 2007 at 1:47 am
And that, folks, is why the ID movement is sunk scientifically if not politically. In the end they've got excuses & insults instead of answers.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 8, 2007 @ 1:47 am
November 8th, 2007 at 1:53 am
3 out of 8 is a lot?
Heck, he can't even admit he was wrong on the "intraflagellar transport means irreducible complexity squared" thing, when I demonstrated that intraflagellar transport is in fact missing in some systems. No other IDer has been able to admit it either. Real scientists would admit the mistake forthrightly and move on.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 8, 2007 @ 1:53 am
November 8th, 2007 at 2:07 am
I wasn't quantifying it in that way, and the entire 'that isn't fair' reply was in regards to your criticisms being a waste of time for Behe. Behe spent a few days replying to criticisms you brought up, so obviously he considered your review worth the digital ink. Did it satisfy you? Of course not. Maybe you have a point – I haven't been able to sit down and read Behe's book yet. Did Behe make points you didn't want to address? Could be the case. I don't have much invested in Behe, but I respect his tone.
Real scientists are human beings, Nick, and human beings of any class aren't always eager to admit their mistakes on the spot. I've seen you do the 'excuses & insults' dance on this very blog when it comes to ID proponents, history, and claims. Real scientists can be loudmouthed jackasses, inept, greedy, or even sincere and wrong – like everyone else, they are imperfect in various respects. Sorry to break the news to you.
Comment by nullasalus — November 8, 2007 @ 2:07 am
November 8th, 2007 at 2:11 am
Sigh…ID proponents are always so certain they've got evidence on their side, but when someone well-informed comes to the table to challenge them, they just melt away…
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 8, 2007 @ 2:11 am
November 8th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Real scientists are drama queens.
Comment by nullasalus — November 8, 2007 @ 2:20 am
November 8th, 2007 at 3:12 am
More insults instead of answers…
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 8, 2007 @ 3:12 am
November 8th, 2007 at 3:24 am
Nick, do you even read what I post? My first comment in here was to defend your review as worth Behe's time. If you had the inclination, you could go scan my posts on TT about Behe (Even on UD if you wish) and you'll find a whole lot of 'He's very polite and civil, which I respect, even though I don't really buy into claims of ICness'. I said as much in this thread. Why you seem to be playing me off as some mean ol' creationist is a mystery.
Meanwhile, yes, I think it's funny how you're doing the net equivalent of sighing heavily with hands on hips, wondering why no one's given you a response fast enough (shortly after some major site downtime, on a day where you and I are apparently the only ones posting at the moment.) Laugh a little, don't be so angry. It's what Einstein would have done, I'm almost positive!
Comment by nullasalus — November 8, 2007 @ 3:24 am
November 8th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Nick, regarding insults, just look at yourself. How many times have you insulted Behe?
But again you miss the big picture. In DBB Behe was explicit about those 4 constituents being the IC portion of the blood clotting cascade. But you think you've got him broke because you can find places where he was either uncertain or ambiguous regarding the role of the other proteins (thinking that they could also be considered IC)…. despite the fact that Behe himself said that he wasn't certain regarding the role of those other factors. So you fault him for what…. being honest?
Even if it were just 3 components that needed to be there in order for proper blood clotting (don't forget about the necessary cessation and removal of that clot) you've got nothing, you're still confronted with process that is IC.
But you're running off at the mouth like "but over here Behe said this…. and over here Behe said this…. and he even once said this". Like some punk… gladly illuminating any area of self-admitted ambiguity or confusion to obscure the big picture.
And you wonder why Behe doesn't seem more forthcoming at times? Can you blame him? He's got punks like you that try to foil him on every little technicality. Because even if he was on to something, you'd bray so loud (like you already do) trying to drown out anything of relevance that he could conceivably say.
Nick, if anything in this world is pathetic – it's people like you. Science and general understanding will be hindered, because you'll be so quick to mock and deride on those technicalities.
Comment by Doug — November 8, 2007 @ 10:05 am
November 8th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Nick:
So what if it is missing, it means something is so substantially different such that transport is not required. What matters is how the IFT machinery got there in the first place, because it is in fact required in many systems (e.g. even in sensory cilia in Drosophila) and is considerd to reflect the ancestral state. It is still IC2.
Comment by Guts — November 8, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
November 8th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Not at all Nick. Maybe Mike doesn't think every blowhard with an axe to grind needs to be answered. He is right there BTW.
If you expect Mike to answer every objection thrown at him, then I would expect you as a defender of Darwinism to answer every objection thrown at your ideas. Do you do that ? Every single one in the amount of detail the person asking the question expects ?
If you don't, yet you expect Mike to do this for your questions then you are a hypocrite.
Comment by thesciphishow — November 8, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
November 9th, 2007 at 5:55 am
Raevmo: IC, CSI and FL are not scientific concepts, at least according to mainstream science (or words to that effect)
Therein lies the rub. Is there anything inherent in the definition of IC, CSI or FL which is unscientific? IC – (something like) there is no gradualistic , "darwinian" process whereby systems consisting of several complex, interacting components might naturally arise. CSI – (something like) there is no gradualistic, "darwinian" process by which a system rich in complex, specified information might arise. FL – (something like) there is evidence that some of the specification in more modern organisms is contained in distant ancestors, which didn't have the requirement to use this specification.
Now, as scientific propositions, it may be the case that there are terms within those propositions which require definition (- even more likely, it may be the case that my definitions are off the mark). However, there is nothing inherent in those definitions that is unscientific – and that should therefore result in them being excluded from study as part of science.
So how come they are being rejected? The "mainstream science" issue is basically bogus. Endosymbiosis wasn't "mainstream science" once, nor was the big bang, nor the Copernican universe … etc. The "mainstream science" challenge is irrelevant as a general challenge to ID (in all its guises), as every significant proposition starts out as being outside "mainstream science". Even if mainstream science is defined in philosophical materialist terms (which is only one possible definition, and historically a minority opinion), there is still nothing about these propositions which in themselves causes a problem – it would still be legitimate to do research to falsify the propositions, or to determine the extent of naturalistic processes.
What about what children are taught in school? Of course, in science classes, they need to be taught "mainstream science" – and indeed, as far as I can tell, this is what the Discovery Institute have been pushing for. But to teach "mainstream science" and not to teach the provisional nature of scientific conclusion (which can be well illustrated in lots of ways) is really to breed scientific ignorance. Scientists have inquiring minds – the role of science isn't to reproduce a canon of received wisdom, it's to explore the boundaries of knowledge. Isn't it? So you're not going to get good scientists through the system if you teach them to learn such a canon.
So if science ought to be the pursuit of knowledge, and not the passing on of received knowledge, then what is driving the desire to ensure that no dissent is heard on the issue of darwinism? Why are proponents of darwinism so keen to stress that it is a FACT and that other voices aren't scientific (though as I've pointed out already, I can't see how this is the case)? Why are they using a legal mechanism designed to ensure freedom of religion to exclude the consideration of scientific ideas from classes? Even if the motivation of every proponent of ID were religious, the propositions of ID are scientific. The simple assertion that their motivation is religious doesn't itself falsify the propositions.
I can't see that the reason for the exclusion of ID is to do with science. I can't see that it is anything but religious or philosophical.
Comment by Exile From Groggs — November 9, 2007 @ 5:55 am
November 9th, 2007 at 10:43 am
The definitions of these polemic ID Concepts tend to be vague and changeable. But there is nothing inherently unscientific about the suggestion or speculation that some biological systems may not be evolvable through non-telic mechanisms.
Teaching the limits of the scientific method is prudent and essential. Pretending that ID is a reasonable scientific position in light of the evidence is not.
Therein lies the rub. When given clear scientific defintions, there is nothing inherently unscientific about the aforementioned ID Concepts. But as scientific propositions they lack empirical merit.
Comment by Zachriel — November 9, 2007 @ 10:43 am
November 9th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Why aren't you as demanding of Modern Synthesis?
Comment by Doug — November 9, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
November 9th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Exile From Groggs wrote:
No, no, and no.
Comment by chunkdz — November 9, 2007 @ 2:24 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 4:08 am
Wow. Wow wow wow. Translation: "The irreducible complexity argument is based on the idea that multiple parts are required for function, and this point has been repeated endlessly by ID proponents for 10 years, but if the parts aren't actually required it's no big deal, so what?"
He wasn't ambiguous, Behe said in Pandas that death was the "nearly certain result" of having only those 4 proteins. Or maybe your definition of "ambiguous" is more ambiguous than mine.
And all of this came up in the first place only because Behe reacted so indignantly to Ken Miller pointing out that various blood-clotting proteins are missing in whales, fish, etc. Behe (and now Guts) responded, expressing great impatience, that obviously it was just the mean critics not bothering to pay close attention Behe's real, one true definition of "the system" which constitutes the "irreducible" blood-clotting cascade. But if such defenses are going to be raised, then it is perfectly legitimate to see whether or not Behe himself can consistently define his "irreducible" systems. If he can't, and just redefines "the system" whenever someone finds a way to reduce it, the argument is sunk.
I love this. The proponents of "irreducible complexity" have abandoned the bit about how their systems are supposed to be "irreducible"!! "Nick, if you get the 12-part blood-clotting system down to three parts it still doesn't matter, obviously there's no way that a system that can vary between 3 and 12 'required' parts could ever have gotten from 1 to 3 parts. It's totally inconceivable!!" I mean, listen to yourselves!
P.S.: Lancelets may well just have one clotting protein, what will you say then?
You are forgetting that Behe and Guts were the ones who were oh-so-recently insisting on paying close attention to Behe's words and definitions of systems. Fickle are the standards of IDists…
Translation: "I can't come up with an empirical rebuttal to Nick's points, so I will just insult him instead and trivialize Behe's scientific mistakes as mere 'technicalities'."
I may be a blowhard, but since I'm the only one in this discussion who has addressed the scientific issues relevant to evaluating Behe's argument in The Edge of Evolution, what does that make all of you guys?
Please. My review was like 800 words long. I made a mere 8 points, each one targetted at key points of Behe's argument in his book. It's not like I'm asking him to rebut a phonebook. But Behe didn't even try to address most of them, even the simple ones. That by itself is not a huge deal — maybe he is a busy guy, I don't care. But if I'm going to have a discussion about The Edge of Evolution, I'm going to darn well bring Behe's 8 mistakes up, and if neither Behe nor any of his defenders can come up with evidence showing that they are right or that I am wrong, then it's simply a fact that they don't have a scientific leg to stand on until someone comes up with such evidence.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 10, 2007 @ 4:08 am
November 10th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Heh. Reducible "irreducible complexity". Game over.
Hmmm. Couldn't tell from the length of your posts.
Comment by bipod — November 10, 2007 @ 7:23 am
November 10th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Nick:
Nick there's a reason why most of the time it's required, and sometimes it's not. It looks like you think it's never required, you're wrong. It's sort of like saying , you don't need a complex vehicle (plane/train/boat/car) to get to mexico if you already live 2 meters from the border. It's still irreducibly complex2 for those who need it because they live half way across the world. Here's the explanation in the literature: "The formation of most cilia and flagella is initiated by contact of the basal body with the plasma membrane. As the axoneme elongates from the basal body, it is tightly enclosed over its entire length by the membrane, which becomes the ciliary or flagella membrane. Because the axoneme grows by addition of new subunits to its distal tip, the site of assembly of these subunits is far from their site of synthesis in the cytoplasm; this is why IFT is required to deliver the axonemal precursors to the growing tip." So for one of your examples, the Drosophila sperm axoneme, however, is "almost completely surrounded by cytoplasm during its elongation; only the last micron or so of its distal tip is enclosed by an invaginated plasma membrane"(from Cell Motility: Deaf Drosophila Keep the Beat. Current Biology, Volume 13, Issue 20, Pages R796-R798)
So the flagellum of the Drosophila sperm is assembled in the cytoplasm and not by IFT, which is therefore not required. Most organisms grow a flagella out of an individual spermatid, the axoneme pushes on the plasma membrane as it grows out. New material adds at the tip of these flagella as they grow, so it needs the IFT machinery to transport new axonemal components to the tip of the flagella where most are assembled. Drosophila synthesize many axonemes inside a single cell and then use a myosin to roll the plasma membrane down and around the individual axonemes and new nuclei (afaik). Anyway, what's clear in this thread is that whenever we look closer at one of your examples, your criticism melts away.
Nick:
Nick you're just misrepresenting Behe again. Behe has been clearly consistent in the trial, Pandas, and DBB (this is the point in the trial where the lawyer makes a complete ass of himself, and it's not the only time). His point has always been that yes, you need more than those 4 proteins, but at the moment we're just going to say that this is the requried set, because more research is needed to say what else is required before the fork. And yes, it's a fork for a reason (words actually mean things), it means there's more than one way to activate the proteins, and one of those ways may be disadvantageous, so it's expected that it would be lost in some lineages. What's important is to figure out what steps/how simple/complex it is to activate those proteins.
Comment by Guts — November 10, 2007 @ 8:50 am
November 10th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Hello Frostman,
You are wrong. The evidence upon which these opinions are based is when Behe began to write EoE. Dawkins and Matzke tell us he wrote it as a come back attempt from the Dover Trial, meaning he began working on it after the trial. In trying to come up with evidence after the fact, Matzke has three times tried to provide it. And he has failed.
It would seem to me that a crowd that postures as if evidence is oh-so-important would do the right thing and acknowledge there is no evidence for this historical claim about Behe.
Comment by MikeGene — November 10, 2007 @ 9:16 am
November 10th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Many of those proteins never were in the clotting pathways of the organisms that lack them! Whales have lost a protein, but the pufferfish lineage never had three of them. Those three proteins are more recently derived.
And you obviously haven't read Behe's discussion of blood-clotting in Pandas (1993). Here is more:
C'mon, you don't have to admit Behe was wrong about everything, but you do have to admit that at least in 1993 Behe was talking about the whole blood-clotting system being irreducible, and therefore mentioning reduced systems is a legitimate point.
As for IFT, all you have said is, "It's required to produce cilia, except when it's not required" and therebye admitted that you have no coherant definition of "irreducible." The old argument was "all these parts are required, so how could an IC system come together all at once?" But now you've just been reduced to rhetoric and obfuscation, with parts being required for function sometimes but not always — which just obliterates the original premise of the IC argument, which was that all the parts were required. How much simpler could it possibly get?
And we haven't even talked about the bacterial flagellum regulatory proteins that Behe thought were required in EoE, but which aren't…
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 10, 2007 @ 4:56 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
John Travolta was working on his acting before he began work on Pulp Fiction, therefore Pulp Fiction was not a comeback attempt. That's about the level of your argument.
Here's another thing you haven't thought of. The Edge of Evolution contains many references throughout to articles published in 2006. Ergo, it was substantially written, or at least heavily revised, in 2006. This would also match well with the publication date in June 2007, since it takes maybe several months to get from the finished manuscript to the printed version (well, at least normally…I ordered my copy of your book, um, 17 months ago, and that was at my old address…).
So what you're trying to tell us is that Behe went through this major event and defeat at the end of 2005, early on in the writing of his book, then vigorously responds to that defeat in print, media, and lectures throughout 2006 while in the middle of writing his new book, and then when the book comes out in 2007 we're not allowed to call it a comeback attempt. This is about as convincing as Nelson's "a system can be irreducible complexity squared even though the bit that makes it 'squared' is completely reducible" argument.
Comment by Nick Matzke — November 10, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Nick Matzke:
Nick, the plausibility of Behe's ideas must be be defeated in labs not courtrooms. The fact that a lawyer does not believe in IC is, in the long run, quite irrelevant.
Comment by Bradford — November 10, 2007 @ 5:43 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Nick quotes:
Yeah and he's right, you can get AHF. However, this is part of the intrinsic pathway, and just a few pages earlier he makes the same distinction as he does in DBB , they talk about how the clotting cascade can be activated by two different routes. What you need to do is show how he connects to IC so that it generally applies.
Nick:
That's ridiculous, no one believes that if you say there are two ways to activate something that means you're saying all organisms absolutely need both of them to work simulatenously. I think you're getting a little too desperate.
And besides, you could've successfully shown that Behe stated you need both the intrinsic and the extrinsic pathways for the clotting system to work, and that still wouldn't mean anything. What matters is what he later defined and clearly delineated in DBB. Or better yet, what matters is what he is arguing in EoE and at his amazon blog, it's his current mode of thinking about these issues that matter. I could find plenty of your errors from ISCID and use them against you for the rest of your life, but that would be silly.
Nick:
Thats simply not true. What I said was that if you need to build cilia far away from the site of synthesis in the cytoplasm you need the IFT machinery and therefore it is IC2, and that's why it is in fact required in many systems, you didn't respond.
Nick:
I havn't looked into it but I wouldn't be surprised if it is just the same blunder. Heck, I may even post all my comments in this thread in a formal blog entry.
Comment by Guts — November 10, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Nick:
According to the notes, not a single reference to a paper published in 2006 appears until chapter 5 (although he uses some illustrations from 2006) and only sporadically from then on. There are a lot more from 2003-2005 which is consistent with my e-mail consversation with him from 2004.
Comment by Guts — November 10, 2007 @ 6:20 pm